Tall Ships: Fab fare, much more

The tall ship Unicorn loops around Halifax harbour following its arrival Tuesday. The first ship to arrive for the Tall Ships Festival, which begins today, has an all-female crew partnered with the Sisters of Sail, a leadership program for teen girls and women. It was constructed of metal from former German U-boats in 1947. (TIM KROCHAK/ Staff)

AT ONE TIME, if the people on board your tall ship bellyached about the food, you beat them with a knotted rope soaked in seawater until they shut up.

But those malcontents were waterfront-tavern scum pressed into service as seamen, not tourists paying to come on board for a glimpse of the past. So at Tall Ships Nova Scotia 2012, the bill of fare will consist of much more than hardtack and rum.

Tall Ships 2012, which begins today on the Halifax waterfront, will feature dozens of food booths serving everything from fish cakes to lobster rolls to pulled pork — and rum.

Food Network chefs Chuck Hughes (Chuck’s Day Off) and Anna Olson (Bake with Anna Olson) will join well-known local kitchen artists Renee Lavalee (the Feisty Chef) and Alain Bosse (the Kilted Chef) on stage for a series of food demos. All will be on the Catch Seafood Stage.

While Hughes doesn’t often cook with seafood on his TV show, it’s a featured ingredient in his kitchens.

“Unfortunately, TV ruins my life, I’m never allowed to do what I want, in a sense,” he said. “When you’re shooting a show for 40 countries you have to use things that you know people can find.

“To be honest, both my (Montreal) restaurants are mostly all seafood, and the shows on TV, I try to incorporate a little bit of it, but it’s hard to. It’s hard to work with halibut cheeks. Food Network it’s not their thing, they need to be universal.”

Looking forward to working with Nova Scotia lobster, Hughes, who will bring two cooks with him, plans to visit the farmers market so he can “freestyle” his demos.

“We’ll be three guys up there, and we should be able to give people a show in terms of doing more complex recipes, and getting a lot more stuff done than when I’m alone,” he said. “Cooking in front of a camera is more boring than it is to cook in front of live audience. I live off the energy from the live audience.”

Olson, who was born in Georgia and lives in Ontario, doesn’t get to cook with fresh seafood very often, but hopes to get her hands on some crab for her demo.

“I am bringing my helper of my life, my darling husband, Michael, who is a well-known chef in his own right. We are making this excursion as much about learning and tasting Halifax as we’re there to share how we cook with the wonderful seafood of Nova Scotia,” said Olson, who plans to prepare a twist on a Nova Scotia dish.

“I’ll be demonstrating two recipes, one that uses fish, and the other I selected so I could integrate lobster or crab, and I can work with them both because it’s a seafood gumbo recipe.”

A complete list of vendors, menu items, festival hours and the Catch Seafood Stage schedule is available at www.tasteofnovascotia.com.

Free hip-hop and blues concerts take place on Thursday and Friday evenings, but the musical highlight of the festival happens Saturday night, next to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, when the Tall Ships Orchestra backs up Old Man Luedecke and David Myles before performing the William Tell overture and the overture from The Barber of Seville.

“Then there are two great pieces to the finale. The first one, I commissioned Chris Palmer to write a 2012 overture, which is basically an answer to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture,” concert producer Jeff Reilly said of the piece titled Ships and Flags, a 2012 overture.

“It’s a grand work that celebrates 200 years of Nova Scotia maritime activity. It deals with the whole series of immigrants that we’ve had, so we’ve got traditional Irish, Scottish, Iranian, African melodies that are interwoven through the whole thing and it culminates in a combination of the Canadian and American national anthems, kind of together.

“That’s followed by The 1812 Overture, with live cannons down at the waterfront, fireworks, church bells from all over the city, and we want the entire city to participate by making as much noise as they possibly can. All the ships in the harbour are going to be tooting their horns and we purchased 8,000 clappers, those hand clappers that make a lot of noise, so people can grab those down at the waterfront and make tons of noise.”

The Saturday night show starts at 7:30 and tickets are $35.

A short walk down the harbour, Casino Nova Scotia and Music Nova Scotia have partnered to present three days of free concerts, including blues, Celtic, indie, folk and pub acts, on two stages. The complete schedule is at bit.ly/MkLddH.

Now for the festival’s raison d’etre, looking at and visiting tall ships.

The public can board more than a dozen ships along the entire length of the waterfront from today through Sunday, at a cost of $5 for adults, while children under 12 are free when an adult accompanies them. There will be fireworks for four nights, beginning tonight. The Parade of Sail happens Monday at noon.

The first vessel to arrive was STV (Sail Training Vessel) Unicorn, a square topsail, gaff-rigged schooner, based in Bridgeport, Conn., that came to Halifax from Boston.

“We made quick time, and it was fairly foggy when we got close to Nova Scotia, but it was a nice trip,” said Kori Pepper, the ship’s cook, after preparing a brunch of cinnamon-raisin French toast for the crew on Wednesday morning.

The Unicorn is crewed entirely by females, six trainees, aged 13-19, and eight professional crew. It hosts the program Sisters Under Sail.

“It’s actually pretty incredible, definitely a different dynamic,” Pepper said of having only women on board.

Following the Halifax event, the fleet will divide in two, with half sailing north for Port Hawkesbury, Pictou and Pugwash, while the rest head south for Lunenburg and Shelburne.

In conjunction with the festival, Parks Canada is reminding people that this year is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. It will host programs outside the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and on Citadel Hill.

“Visitors will have the chance to step back in time to 1812 through a variety of interactive activities, such as working an 1812 naval gun deck, being ‘press ganged’ into the Royal Navy, trying on 1812 navy uniforms, boarding 1812 tall ships, taking in historical musical performances and seeing 1812 soldiers in action,” Dave Danskin of Parks Canada said in a release.

On Sunday, guided tours of Georges Island begin at 9 a.m., departing from South Battery pier. That evening, Parks Canada will host a sunset ceremony at Citadel Hill at 8 p.m.

A Theodore Tugboat cruise will take families back and forth across the harbour for educational and entertaining programming on the Halifax and Dartmouth waterfronts.

There is a thorough list of Tall Ships events on our What’s Happening pages today, and event details can also be scanned at www.my-waterfront.ca.

Ship Side Gospel: A Live Music concert Tribute to the Tall Ship Amistad on the Compass Rose Stage on Sunday, 1 to 3:20 p.m., with MC Charla Williams, Henry Bishop, Linda Carvery, Cory Adams and The Sanctified Brothers. alderneylanding.com.

A Band On Ship Concert Series:

Concerts taking place at Casino Nova Scotia including the Seawalk Stage on the Halifax waterfront.